


Don't Let My Heart Keep Breaking

by madeinessos



Category: Bates Motel (2013)
Genre: Ambiguity, Canon Compliant, F/M, Incest, Missing Scene, Mommy Issues, Parent/Child Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 19:22:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20296669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madeinessos/pseuds/madeinessos
Summary: Norma has absurdly lovely legs. And as far as Dylan knows his birth was natural.These things have nothing to do with each other. Nothing at all.





	Don't Let My Heart Keep Breaking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crookedspoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedspoon/gifts).

> Title from "This Guy's In Love With You," aka the song that Dylan plays in Season 1 whilst he drinks and sulkily looks at Norma and Norman's photographs.

_My hands are shakin' don't let my heart keep breaking 'cause_  
_I need your love, I want your love_  
_Say you're in love and you'll be my girl_

*

Dylan remained sitting on his bed long after Norma had shut the door.

His mom. Had been in his room. Had sat on his bed. Had implied to him that she trusted him and no one else, not even her precious Norman. None of these things had ever happened before. It was nothing short of a miracle. Just last year Norma had told him more than once that she hated him.

Dylan swallowed.

He turned the flash drive in his hand. It was still warm from Norma’s frantic grip. If he thought hard about it, it was almost as if he was holding her hand. Which was pathetic, really, so Dylan just looked at the dent on the blanket beside him. So close to where he was sat. It still smelled of the fabric conditioner Norma used on her clothes, a fussy powdery scent.

Dylan stared at it.

Then he stared at it some more.

For a wild moment he considered –

He shook his head. That was – no. Goddamn it. That was just crazy. That was only the latent stress brought about by his stint in this crazy town’s pot industry.

Probably.

Still.

Dylan restrained himself from looking back at the dent on his blanket by an ingenious method: looking at the door. Maybe he should leave it ajar from now on. Well, when he wasn’t sleeping. This room was kinda like an attic room, anyway. No need to feel any more cooped up than necessary.

Norma had knocked on that door – on Dylan’s bedroom door – and had come in. She’d looked at him with newly-soft eyes.

Did that mean he could enter her bedroom now? Like a social visit?

Social visit. He scoffed. The fuck.

Dylan closed his fingers over the flash drive. His eyes slid back to that spot on his bed.

Fuck it.

Fuck it all, this was his room and it wasn’t like anyone’s watching, so he lay back down. But this time he pressed his face, slowly, slowly, slowly, on the dent that Norma had made.

It was plush.

It was deeper than he’d expected.

Her fussy powdery scent. His understated mint cologne.

His face kept sinking.

*

Dylan could still remember standing on the threshold of her bedroom this past summer. He always thought about it, always flipped through the images of that memory at the end of the day: Norma in a black bra, choosing an outfit, and he in a soil-stained undershirt. Dylan had lingered. She had let him watch, mostly ignoring him. They’d talked a bit: or rather, he’d poked and pressed, and she’d hedged and denied. Then Norma had slammed the door in his face.

They’d still angered each other then. He still hadn’t known the godforsaken fact that he was Norma’s kid with her own brother.

But even then –

Even then, Dylan had known that he wanted – he wanted –

*

The dent that Norma had made kept gulping him in.

And Dylan kept sinking.

*

Dylan pauses by the threshold. Quickly rubs his nose with the back of his hand. Clears his throat.

“Hey, Mom?”

Norma glances over her shoulder. The early morning sunlight slants through the tall windows and fluffs up her hair.

“Morning, honey.” She’s untying her blue bedrobe. “You’re up early.”

“Oh, you know. Got a lot to do in the cabin.”

Then Norma does a double take. She pauses, one arm already out of the robe, and faces him fully. Behind her, in the mirror, Dylan can see where her black camisole dips low on her spine. Can see planes of pink-tinged skin.

The mirror was body-length. That was not weird. The mirror was also sharp, startlingly clear. That was weird.

Weirdly clear.

Norma takes him in from head to toe with that bright yet unreadable gaze of hers. “What happened to you?”

“Uh.” He shrugs in his undershirt. Smudged with soil. In the mirror Dylan can see that that’s also the case with his cheeks and his forehead, with the bridge of his nose and his collarbones. He just buried someone. He can’t remember if it’s that Chick Hogan or those guys from the Ford family. There’s a floating, lulling sensation in his head. So he just tells her, “I did some gardening.”

Norma lets out a small huff. “Take off those clothes –”

Dylan almost chokes.

“– dump them in the hall table, I’ll put them in the wash tomorrow.”

“Thanks.” Dylan shifts his weight to his other foot. “So what are you doing today?”

Lips curling in a wry grimace, Norma resumes slipping off her robe. “What else? My classes. That crap situation with that USB stick. And that poor girl.” Her arm gets stuck. “Shit – ”

Dylan hurries over the threshold and into the room.

But when he reaches Norma he checks his step just in time, just a hand-span away from her, and only pauses his hands mid-hover. He quietly says, “Here, let me.”

Norma tips up a slight smile at him. She turns her back to him easily enough.

And lets him.

Her biceps are smooth. Her arms are still sleep-warm. Dylan’s grimy hands look rude sliding over them, though he’s careful not to crumple her blue robe. When she tilts her head and considers their reflection in that weirdly clear mirror, the mix of scents leaps up at him like a slap: the fussy powdery one from her sleeping clothes, the ginger-and-pomegranate one from her rumpled hair, the creamy lotion on her skin. She’s never changed her lotion brand. Dylan’s been familiar with it as far as he can remember, even back in the days when she used to grudgingly, impatiently drag him to primary school.

Dylan’s barely breathing.

“I’ve changed my mind.” Whip-like, Norma’s voice cracks the swollen silence. Sudden. Forceful.

“What?”

“Take off your clothes right now – right now – look at the state of them, I’ll put them in the wash with mine.” Then she quickly turns around in his arms making Dylan’s brain blank at registering skin against skin, grabs her robe, and yanks at the low neck of his undershirt, all without a pause.

Norma never fails to make him hold his breath.

“Okay,” Dylan says. “All right.”

Then he simply stares at her. Lingering.

“Now, Dylan.” Norma says it with usual firmness, but newly soft, newly warm. She’s looking at him with a small smile, head slightly tilted. “Don’t make me say it again.”

Only then does it fully hit Dylan that under the robe she’s wearing only the black camisole and a pair of panty-length satin shorts. Norma has absurdly lovely legs.

Dylan quickly licks his lips.

“I rub lotion on them every night.”

“I know,” he says hoarsely, then: “What?”

The corners of Norma’s eyes slant up, almost felinely, crinkling a little. Her pink-tinged chest starts to rise shallowly, fall shortly. “I know you do,” she murmurs. She reaches for the hair near Dylan’s nape. Caressing, tugging, gently squeezing.

_Just gently squeeze it, okay, Mom?_ he told her last year. They were almost cheek to cheek; he was teaching her how to use a gun. They were also irritable with each other.

_You called me Mom. You haven't done that in, like, I don't know how long._

“I know you do,” Norma tells him now, her breath warming his lips. “Dylan, I’m your mother.”

** _ fin_ **


End file.
